For BP: James Molinaro

The 2009 race for borough president features the same two candidates who faced off four years ago — incumbent James Molinaro and challenger John Luisi.

And we hope Staten Island voters make the result of the election on Tuesday be the same as it was in 2005, when Mr. Molinaro defeated Mr. Luisi by a significant margin. Mr. Molinaro, a Conservative who is also running on the Republican and Independence party lines, has surely earned another term.

He knows the inner workings of government, and has built relationships with the players from U.S. senators to deputy commissioners. His expertise and experience are an invaluable asset for the borough.

His deep commitment to the job and to the borough and his remarkable common-sense approach to solving problems are unsurpassed. He is a true representative of regular working people on Staten Island and fully understands their concerns because he shares them. He just happens to be in a position to try to do something about them and that’s what he spends every waking hour doing, with a phenomenal success rate.

Mr. Luisi, a Democrat who is running with the backing of the Working Families Party, is certainly a credible candidate. And once again, he has mounted a sharp, aggressive campaign, even if it is predicated too much on blaming Mr. Molinaro for just about anything that isn’t right.

Mr. Luisi’s implication that, as borough president, he would have produced quick action on issues such as the toxic Brookfield landfill, filling commercial space in the ferry terminal and the North Shore rail line doesn’t wash.

For one thing, we’re all impatient, but for better or worse, major projects such as these can come about only as the result of lengthy, complicated processes in government. And government in this city doesn’t jump on the borough president’s command; the borough president can’t issue decrees that produce all the things that people want to see. Progress in this city is always incremental, always slow. Mr. Luisi should know that if he wants the job.

And for another thing, anyone who has been paying attention knows no one has worked harder or advocated more forcefully than Mr. Molinaro to bring about these improvements.

The benefits of Mr. Molinaro’s leadership go beyond grand-scale, long-term projects, however. Many positive things happen as a result of his tenure.

His relentless and highly effective pressure on the city Department of Transportation to fix problem intersections and roadways has brought some measure relief to traffic-burdened drivers.

The solid working relationships he forged with Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New Jersey officials led directly to the creation of the MTA bus link between Mid-Island and the Hudson-Bergen light-rail system in Bayonne.

He was also one of the prime movers behind the reopening and expansion of the Howland Hook containerport and the opening of the Pratt (formerly Visy) paper plant in Travis. Those facilities employ hundreds of Staten Islanders.

And you’d be hard-pressed to find a public official anywhere who has presided over the addition of more parkland to his jurisdiction than Mr. Molinaro has.

That’s just a small sampling of what Mr. Molinaro has been able to accomplish in his eight years in office.

We look forward to seeing what he can do in his next four. And this Election Day, we urge Staten Islanders to give him the chance to show them.